The Beloit area is getting closer to implementing a comprehensive strategy for reducing the city’s high infant mortality rate, particularly among African American babies. After almost two years of collecting data, meeting with community members, and considering alternatives, the Beloit Chapter of the Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families (LIHF) has developed a plan to decrease the number of infants who die in Beloit each year.

LIHF was created by the Wisconsin Partnership Program and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health to tackle the very high infant mortality rate among African Americans in our state, and it has made grants of about $5 million to groups working in Beloit, Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee. The initiative was developed because of a very large and growing body of research showing that health care disparities, such as elevated infant mortality rates, are correlated with stresses experienced over the course of a lifetime from factors like abuse, poverty, and racism. As we noted in a WCCF blog post a few weeks ago, the Dept. of Health Services reported in late September (during Infant Mortality Awareness Month) that Wisconsin’s overall infant mortality rate in Wisconsin declined from 8.0 to 6.3 deaths per 1,000 live births over the last two decades, but the gains haven’t fully extended to minority groups. For 2008- 2010, an African American infant was 2.7 times as likely to die before reaching his/her first birthday as an infant born to a white woman.  In Beloit, the African American infant mortality rate was about 14 during the 2008-10 period, which was roughly double the rate for the city’s white babies.

Read more about the Community Action Plan in the October 19 article in the Beloit Daily News. You can also find more about LIHF on the Wisconsin Partnership Program website, including a thorough review of the effectiveness of various approaches that have been tried across the country: What Works for Health; Policy and Program Evidence Assessment.

At the national level, the HHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality has set a goal of reducing the rate of infant deaths to less than 4.5 per 1,000 live births by 2020, from the 2010 rate of 6.15.  Their recommendations focus on health care strategies, such as improving women’s health before pregnancy and promoting quality and safety along the continuum of prenatal healthcare.

That sort of health systems approach makes sense for a broad-based plan and will also probably be somewhat helpful in reducing racial disparities.  However, making a significant dent in those disparities will require more comprehensive approaches that involve the whole community and tackle the more fundamental problems that contribute to those disparities.  Finding effective solutions isn’t going to be easy, but we are very happy to see LIHF fund efforts in Beloit and Southeast Wisconsin that will test various approaches to alleviate the cumulative stresses that have been taking a heavy toll on minority women and their babies.

Jon Peacock